


Don't Eat the Mind Honey

by cthchewy (pyrrhic_victoly)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Crapsack World, Dark Comedy, Drug Use, Gen, Original Character Death(s), alternia sucks, spelling bees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 08:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4094506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/cthchewy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuck yeah, Alternian spelling bees.</p><p>For <a href="http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/39716.html?thread=46109220#cmt46109220">this prompt</a>.  Somehow the one idea I had split in half.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Eat the Mind Honey

Any apiculturist worth his code knows not to eat the fucking mind honey. The stuff is worth its weight in gold and royal gems (yeah, that’s right, Biclopsdad eats the equivalent of diamonds for lunch, what of it?), and the mind-bees are cute as fuck and sassy to boot, but you just Don’t. Touch. The Mind Honey.

That shit fries your pan, and it’s not a slow burn like sopor. A mind honey overdose is pretty much instant death… for the consumer, at least. For everyone else, too, if said consumer happens to be a psionic. Depending on the power level of the psionic, this could potentially spell doom for an entire hivestem, a neighborhood, a city perhaps. No one has really tried to do such a thing – feed large quantities of mind honey to a high-grade psionic, that is. Only the most vicious of suipsycho murderbitches would consider it, and usually only in movies.

Maybe that’s why Sollux is so morbidly fascinated with the possible effects of mind honey on himself. The world is going to end soon anyway. He knows it, for the voices of the imminently deceased tell him so, as the voices of the very much deceased tell Aradia. As for why he doesn’t try the honey himself, well, he’s not _that_ curious. The bees deserve better than an ironic death-by-honey, and Sollux is too lazy to leave his hive just to off himself. He doesn’t want to off himself anyway, half the time.

Instead, he’s taken to following the Alternian Spelling Bee Circuit. Some rich off-world fishfuck set up this sweeply championship deal where each sweep’s winner gets a “No Cull*” ticket.

*Good until Ascension. Limit one use per troll per cullable offense. Not valid for accusations of high treason or against the orders of a troll of higher rank than the ticket’s Benefactor. Ticket may not be redeemed except by the troll whose name is printed on the front; doing so is a cullable offense. Theft of ticket is a cullable offense. Loss of ticket is a cullable offense. Other restrictions may apply.

“Hey,” Aradia says, knocking on his window.

“Hey yourself.”

She squeezes in and promptly makes herself at home on the couch where Sollux himself is curled up watching the latest spelling bee match, feeling cynical about the state of the empire and sorry for himself. Aradia smiles brightly like the weirdo she is.

“Is Mathis still alive?” she asks.

“Look for yourself.”

Aradia scans the contestants remaining on the screen. “Aw, pooh. I really liked him!”

“His death was hilarious too. Brains everywhere.”

On screen, the remaining contestants are being dosed with diluted mind honey. One by one, the hopped up trolls are called up before their executioner, a hooded drone who rests his giant pincer around the chosen troll’s neck while asking them to spell a word. Misspelling equals death unless the troll is somehow quick enough to duck out of the drone’s pincer. Mathis had gotten close. If only his horns hadn’t snagged, the rest of his brain might have made it through.

Aradia watches along silently for a while, occasionally sneaking a handful of grubcorn or making a sympathetic noise when a contestant dies an especially gruesome death. “Hmm,” she says, licking her lips for the last traces of salt. “Do you ever wonder what happens to the winner? That much mind honey can’t be good for anyone. I know it’s diluted, but to be dosed every round?”

“Winner dies, always. Might take a few excruciating hours of splitting headaches, but eventually his pan matter will liquefy and leak out the hear ducts.”

“Oh. So everybody dies!”

“Yup.”

“How do they always seem to be able to find new contestants then?”

Sollux shrugs. “No shortage of dumbasses.”


	2. The Culling of Althea Apella

Karkat Vantas, three sweeps old, peeks out the hive door. His Crabdad fusses and frets behind him, clacking his claws in angry concern. Karkat’s lusus has told him, ever since he was old enough to walk, that he’s different from the other trolls who live nearby. Their hive is in the lawnrings, quiet suburbs where lower midbloods live, but Karkat… he bleeds red and blushes rust like the lowest of lowbloods. If they didn’t cull his mutated ass on sight, the trolls around him would at least run him out of the neighborhood.

Karkat has kept to himself since he was a just-hatched grub. As soon as the carpenter drones finished building this hive for him, he’s been locking the doors to all but his lusus. He eats only what Crabdad catches on the hunt or what he can order online with a lower midblood’s Imperial Allowance. When he goes outside, it’s only after confirming that no one else is around. He’s never actually _met_ any of his neighbors, though he assumes they’re all horrible. Crabdad has promised that he can get a real computer on his next hatchday, to replace his worn out Wiggler’s First Husktop™, so maybe there will be Internet hatefriends to look forward to when he can actually download chat programs, but for now…

“The world is against you,” Crabdad says. “Be careful, wriggler.”

Now it’s time for Karkat’s first proctored exam session, which means his first trip to the neighborhood schoolfeeding hive. He’s been studying the materials alone, just like everyone else. But twice a sweep they assemble all trolls of schoolfeeding age, and today happens to be one of those days.

There will be _other trolls_. Karkat hesitates with his nubby horns poking out the door and everything else inside. Crabdad gives him a little push.

“Go get schoolfed, grub. They’ll cull you if you don’t show up.” 

In actuality, Crabdad says “SKREEEEE!” but Karkat understands what his lusus really means. He gulps nervously and shuffles out, keeping his head down, trudging down the road.

Shuffle, shuffle. Karkat grips the straps of his grubpack until his knuckles are bone-white. He studiously keeps his eyes on the dirt road ahead; so much so that it’s three blocks away from his hive that he finally notices he’s being followed. Or. Not quite.

Karkat hears the creak of wooden wheels, glances up and to the side at where another troll has been keeping pace with him from atop a vehicle of sorts.

“Hey wiggler, you want a ride?”

It’s a wagon. A young troll rolls by in the dinky hive-made wagon pulled by her landgoat lusus. Karkat sneaks her a suspicious look, but otherwise pretends not to notice she was calling to him. “Don’t talk to strangers,” Crabdad had said. “They’re all assholes who want to cull you.”

The stranger in question is a greenblood like almost all of Karkat’s neighbors. She’s a bit yellow-ish, just a shade or two off from a true deep olive, but not quite heretical lime. He sees this from the symbol on her shirt, a circle within a circle connected by lines like the spokes of a wheel: Auriga. She has a baby landgoat tucked under an arm, and another one on her lap. Siblings, Karkat guesses. The entire happy fucking family is headed for the schoolhive like it’s some sort of wiggler-friendly basket-lunch instead of the brutal cullzone it is.

Karkat puffs out his cheeks and says, “Fuck no! Leave me alone!”

“But you’re so little,” she says. “I bet it’s your first time going to the schoolhive. What if you get lost? You’ll be _late_ , and you don’t wanna know what happens to grubs who’re _late_.”

“Yeah? What happens?”

“ _Bad things happen._ Your lusus will cry. Lemme give you a ride.”

So Karkat arrives at the schoolhive riding in fucking style. A baby landgoat on his head chewing on his hair, and another nosing around his ass, probably trying to decide whether or not to attempt noshing on his pants.

The suspiciously friendly older girl – Althea, she says – waves and tells him to head straight for his class. But Karkat is a dumbass and doesn’t listen. He goes instead to the ablution block to wipe off the goat spit in his hair, and, like a complete and utter tool, doesn’t notice the time until he’s rushing into his assigned schoolfeeding block and runs smack into an angry schooldrone.

“YOU ARE LATE,” the schooldrone says. It motions for Karkat to hold out his hands, and smacks them once with a length-measuring stick. The sting is tolerable, but Karkat makes sure to hide his hands in his pockets immediately in case his blood color shows through.

Another troll comes running into the class block after Karkat gets settled in his seat. It’s now five minutes after the designated arrival time and the drone says, “YOU ARE VERY LATE.” The newcomer gets three smacks, each hard enough to draw blood. His fingers might be broken; it’ll be hard to type his answers for the essay portion of the tests.

All the students are given data grubs to plug into their integrated desk husktops. Karkat’s grub has just rolled over and presented its grub port when yet another troll comes up to the class block. This time the late troll stops short and tries to sneak in behind the schooldrone, but anyone could tell that wasn’t going to work.

“YOU ARE TOO LATE.”

The drone whirls around and crushes the troll’s head on the spot.

It’s the first time Karkat has seen anyone killed that wasn’t on-screen. There are bits of greenish pan matter on the side of his desk. 

\--

Karkat stumbles his way to the communal nutrition hall during their designated meal break. He and his classmates stick out by virtue of being the smallest. The older trolls leer at the fresh meat. Some call out, “Hey, grubbies, heeeeey.”

Cowering seems to attract more attention, so Karkat blusters instead. He tries to imitate the swagger used by movie stars. He’s not very good at it, which ends up attracting snickers and sneers.

“Yo,” says a greasy looking yellowblood. “Want I should give y’all the official tour?” He’s not even subtle with his hostility, minor psionic sparks lighting up along his horns.

Wow. Seriously, what a lousy weakling. Someone upwards of five sweeps picking on three-sweep-olds. Karkat struggles to keep Crabdad’s warnings in mind. He really just wants to verbally rip this douche a new wastechute.

“Buzz off. He’s with me.” It’s Althea. Tiny landgoatbro flopped limply over her head, check. Teeny landgoatsis using her shoulder as a mountain, double check.

“There ya go, picking up stray grubs again. Don’t come crying to me when they turn on you and rip you apart. We gots to keep ‘em grubs in line with fear, you feel me?”

“Oh come on, Karkat wouldn’t do that! Look at this little guy’s nubs! I’m not stupid, you know. I size trolls up and only help the ones I can take in a fight.”

“Yeah, and if they poison you? Frame you for some shit to get the drones on your ass?”

“That shit only ever happens to _you_ because you’re sleazier than a used bucket. Unlike you, I’m not a brooding cavern robber!”

Althea *flounces* off with Karkat shouting after her.

“Let go of me! Condesce’s globes, you’re crazy! I’m not one of your goddamn goat siblings, stop trying to lusus me!” 

Whispers follow behind them – something about Althea being a “schooldrone’s pet”, whatever that means. Karkat is too incensed to pay them much mind. He shouts all the way outside to where Goatmom and the wagon are waiting under a tree, blanket spread out over the grass. They really are having a family basket-lunch…

Karkat can’t bring himself to say anything insulting about that. It’s only been half a night and he already misses Crabdad. His digestion sac growls; he didn’t get to buy any food and didn’t pack any of his own. Mental Crabdad screeches at him, “Don’t take candied grubs from strangers!” but Althea is twice his size and her lusus has a maw of Very Sharp Teeth and she is offering him a _sandwich_. There are at least fifty fucking ways he could die in this situation, so it might as well be on a full stomach.

He tells her about the culling of the too-late troll, but it’s _not_ a gesture of friendship! It’s just because the silence was getting awkward with three goats and two trolls, all of them chewing and staring at each other.

“I told you,” Althea says. “Don’t be late!”

“Gee, thanks. I could’ve used a less cryptic warning, you know!”

She shrugs. “Meh.”

Sweeps of schoolfeeding exams have obviously desensitized her to the deaths of random classmates. Fuck trolls, seriously. Karkat says as much.

Althea laughs. “Stick with me,” she says. “I’ll show you how to game the system.”

\--

There are still some hours until dawn when the exams are finished. Karkat debates ditching Althea to return to hive alone, but then thinks better of it. She knows where he lives! He’d rather not make an enemy of his neighbor, not when he’s at such a disadvantage in size and knowledge of the outside world.

Hatefriend it is, then. Perhaps it won’t be so bad. Althea seems to have some standing among her peers, even if she is suspiciously nice. It’s still one more layer of protection than he had before. Althea and her goatfamily are waiting by the same tree where they had lunch. She smiles and waves to him.

“Hey! I wanted to ask if you would mind going to an extracurricular activity with me before we head back to the lawnrings,” she says. “You could sign up for it too, if you wanted.”

“What is it?”

“A spelling bee! I’m last sweep’s school champ, I’ll have you know! And I’m joining again this sweep! I’ve been practicing all this past light season, and I think I can make it past regionals this time. Greenies represent! For the lawnrings!” Althea excitedly pumps her fists as she harnesses her Landgoatmom and hops into the wagon, then pats the seat beside her.

Karkat’s expression of distaste sent Althea into giggles, which further cemented his scowl. “Whatever. As long as there are no actual bees involved. There aren’t, right?”

“Don’t worry, sugargrub. There are _definitely_ bees involved!”

“Let’s get this over with then… Wait. What?!”

\---

“What the hell is that?”

“ _That_ ,” Althea says, arms sweeping forward in a grand gesture, “is the spelling bee!”

“I don’t see any bees.”

There’s a stage, dark and with a vague honeycomb pattern background. There are plenty of trolls gathered on and beneath it, too. They’re setting up chairs, tables, and a microphone, but no apiaries.

“There!” Althea gestures to where there are obviously no bees. “There, that’s the bee!”

“That’s just a honeycomb pattern; there’s no fucking bee in—”

“It’s not a pattern!”

It’s not a pattern. A large – LARGE – fuzzy black head emerges from the centermost comb. The head alone is the size of two young trolls.

“BUZZ,” says the giant red and black bee. It scoots out of the hive, shimmying so its massive fuzzy bee-butt can pop through.

“So how the fuck do you _spell_?”

Althea smirks. “Like this!”

In a moment she’s launched herself toward the stage, where apparently the emergence of the bee was the cue to start. All around, trolls fling themselves at the bee, scrambling to climb up. Those at the top have pulled out their strife specibi and are attempting to knock each other off. Althea has fought her way to the bee’s head; her specibus, being some kind of polearm, gives her good mid-range offense and defense power.

All the while, the giant bee remains nonplussed. It rubs its legs on its abdomen as if cleaning off some invisible pollen, then washes its face, all while seemingly unaware of the carnage occurring on its back. The bee then gives another loud BUZZ and takes off, twirling figure eights in the sky.

Small robotic cameras hover around, capturing the flight of the bee and transmitting it to the screens set up on either side of the stage, now vacated except for the injured. Karkat’s attention shifts between the screens and the HUGE FUCKING DEATH BEE FLYING OVERHEAD DEATH FROM ABOVE RUN RUN RUN!

A few wigglers his age are doing just that. The only reason Karkat doesn’t bolt for it himself is because he’s been left sitting in the wagon with goatbro and goatsis each occupying a knee while goatmom looks on her eldest with something akin to pride.

In a vague part of Karkat’s mind, he’s able to process that there’s a scoring system. Certain words are shouted at regular intervals; they boom through the air courtesy of the many, many speakers surrounding this deathtrap arena. A bio-keyboard has lit up along the giant bee’s back, each key flashing when hit or stepped on. The contestants – er, combatants? – strife each other while trying to hit the keys in the correct order.

It all seems so needlessly complicated.

Karkat says as much to goatsis.

“Maaaah,” says goatsis. She drools on his pants.

A cheer goes up as, on the screen, Althea knocks an opponent off the bee during the final word. The bee lands, deceptively daintily, and Althea, also deceptively daintily, hops off. The spectators clap and cheer, but give her a wide berth as she descends the stage. Blood drips down her claws.

He used to think Althea was nice. _Too_ nice. Now he knows how she made it so far. Karkat wordlessly hands her the reigns.

“I’m only nice to my hatefriends,” she says as if answering his unvoiced question. “And little guys like you because you haven’t grown up into an asshole yet. You’ll learn, though, that it’s what we all gotta do to survive.”

“We don’t all have to join shithive maggots culling competitions just to get by!”

“Well, no, but where’s the fun in laying low?”

Karkat screams in frustration, but Althea just laughs. “Let’s face it,” she explains. “If I just went under the radar until conscription, I’d be given a stupid paper-punisher job because that’s what yellow-greenies get if they’re not aggressive enough to be front-line fighters but don’t stand out in any other way. Well, I’d rather die than be a paper-punisher! It’s docterrorist or bust, and you’ve gotta have really high schoolfeeding scores for that kind of position with our kind of blood. Understand?”

“The hemospectrum sucks.”

“Shh!” Althea gives him a wink. “Even lowbloods can go far if they know how to play. We make the best of what we’re given.” 

They spend the rest of the hivebound trip in silence. Althea drops him off at his door and says, “Come support me at regionals!”

\--

Regionals is utter hoofbeastshit. Contestants arrive from all different bloodcastes; there are highbloods, which makes the competition that much deadlier. It’s so obviously rigged, even Karkat can see it. But Althea, bless her stupid optimism, is such shit at being a proper troll that she thinks she can win through talent.

Yeah, right. Maybe if she were teal. Maybe if she had some semblance of a highblood’s rage-strength, or even a lowblood’s psionics – oh wait, psionics are banned! Hah. A green on the lower end of mid stands no chance, none at all, when going against blues and the odd purple. It doesn’t matter how well she can spell or how skilled she is with her specibus. If they catch her, she’s dead, and Karkat tells her as much.

“Listen, Althea… I don’t think you should fight. Just, I dunno, dodge them or something.”

“Wow, you’ve sure grown up in just a quarter of a sweep if you’re giving me orders now!” She grins.

“I’m fucking serious here! The blues will _kill_ you!”

“Relax, I’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, you _fell off the bee_. You tripped and _fell off the bee_ before they could murder you and wear your corpse as a hat!”

“Aaaaand… It won’t happen again! I’ve looked up my opponents. None of them can spell worth a damn.”

“BWAAAAAAHHHH! IT’S NOT ABOUT SPELLING YOU BRICK FOR PAN!”

“Sure, Karkat. I’ll see you after, okay? Grubburgers, my treat!”

“NO! HEY! ALTHEA! LISTEN TO ME! HEY! LISTEN, NOOKCHAFE! HEY! I’M NOT FINISHED! HEY!”

“I’ll see you~!”

“DON’T FIGHT THEM! DON’T FIGHT THEM I SWEAR TO FUCK JUST JUMP OFF THE BEE IF THEY COME AT YOU!”

\--

Althea doesn’t listen. She dies. 

To her credit, she makes it to almost the end when all the other low-to-midbloods have died or absconded. She knocks down a blue, even, before this big indigo fucker catches her and culls her in front of the crowd as an example of overstepping caste boundaries.

Goatmom and goatbro and goatsis all cry.

Karkat grows up into an asshole. They create a new universe, him and his eleven hatefriends. Their symbols hang in the stars above the world that is theirs to rule over as gods. The humans they created list a fuckton of constellations in addition to the twelve, and at first Karkat thinks they’re just making shit up until he sees the one they call Auriga – Althea’s symbol, her constellation – a chariot in the sky, being pulled along by a landgoat. 

This world was made from their wishes, their memories. The stars Karkat made for her are the only proof left that she ever existed; that she ever mattered to someone.

Fuck spelling bees, seriously.


End file.
